Article

Design and web agencies: get paid for your records

By TrustPast

Updated November 7, 2026

This page is for the owner of a small design or web agency. You have a decade of proposals, project boards, feedback rounds and launch checklists, spread across five tools and two old ones you stopped paying for. You have probably assumed it all belongs to the clients. Some of it does. The rest is the agency’s own record of how creative and technical work gets scoped, argued over and shipped, and buyers license records like that to train AI models.

What an agency usually doesn’t see is that the finished site is the least interesting thing it made. The interesting part is everything around it: the proposal that was cut by a third, the change request on week six, the internal comment that said the second round missed the brief, and the ticket that was reopened three times before launch. Our page on what data buyers want from a trade business sets out the test buyers apply, using trades. An agency passes the same test in its own way.

Statements about Polyshares on this page are quoted from its published pages. Descriptions of an agency’s files are our own. Your contracts, read by your counsel, decide what is yours.

The records a design and web agency keeps

Our examples, not a buyer’s list. These are the records an agency produces as it works, project after project.

The proposal and its versions. A brief comes in. Someone writes a proposal with three options: a template build, a custom build, a custom build with a content strategy phase. The client asks for the middle option at the price of the first. Version two drops the content phase and halves the illustration budget. Version three goes out with a smaller scope and a later date. Our page on estimates and quotes explains why the versions matter more than the final figure. In an agency, the lost pitches matter too. A pitch that lost to a cheaper studio records a price a market turned down.

The estimate by phase. Discovery, wireframes, visual design, build, testing, launch. Hours by role for each. Next to it, the time actually logged. The gap between the two, by project type and by year, is how an agency learned to price. Almost nobody keeps that comparison on purpose. Most agencies have it anyway, in the time tracker.

The change requests. Week six, the client wants a members’ area. Someone writes up the extra scope, the hours, the new date. The client approves half of it. Each change request is a decision about scope under pressure, with the reason written down.

The feedback rounds. Round one: the client says the palette feels cold. Round two: the client’s colleague says the new palette feels loud. Round three: everyone agrees on round one with a warmer accent. Anyone who has worked in an agency has lived that project. The written trail of it, with the designer’s notes on what was tried and why, is the reasoning behind the result.

The ticket board. For web builds, the sprint board or the task tracker. Each ticket from creation to done: the bug report, the reproduction steps, the developer’s note, the fix, the QA comment, the reopen, the second fix. Our page on project history explains why a project’s path from kickoff to closeout is a stronger record than its final state.

The launch checklist and the post-launch support queue. Redirects, analytics, forms, accessibility checks, the item that was skipped and why. Then the retainer tickets that came in for a year afterwards: what broke, what the client misunderstood, what the agency changed.

The handoff and the design system. At the end of a project, someone writes the handoff: which components exist, how the type scale works, which colours pass contrast checks, what the developer should never change. Over the years an agency builds its own starter kit from those handoffs: the base components, the checklist for accessibility, the folder structure every project starts from. The starter kit is the agency’s method made reusable, and it usually belongs to the agency rather than to any one client. Its version history shows each lesson being folded back in.

The retrospective. Some agencies write one after each project. What went well, what didn’t, what to change next time. A shelf of retrospectives is an agency teaching itself, in writing.

How a scope was argued down, how a design was reached through three rounds, how a bug was found and fixed: that is the how. Who the client was, and the finished deliverable they own, are separate questions.

See your estimate

What counts, in the buyer’s own words

Polyshares does not publish a page about agencies, but it has published a deal with one, and its pages say a good deal about this kind of record.

On sectors, its home page lists “professional services” among businesses with “real operating history” that qualify. Its case studies list one professional services licence: a “Global marketing agency” at $110,000 (indicative, not an offer). That is a marketing agency, not a design studio, and Polyshares does not publish what its record held.

On the systems, its data licensing page names “design files” alongside “Slack and Teams, Drive and SharePoint, email, CRM history, support tickets” and others. Design files are on the list in the buyer’s own words.

On what it pays for, the same page says “A thread where two people disagree about a quote and work it out carries judgment that cannot be manufactured.” In an agency, that thread is the scope negotiation on the proposal, and the internal argument over which round to present.

Its tool guides describe the agency stack directly. The Figma guide: “Figma files hold the path from rough exploration to shipped interface: frames, components, layout rules and the prototype flows between screens. Version history shows how a design changed over weeks of review.” The Adobe Creative Cloud guide: “a single layered file shows how a finished image was built, not only the final pixels.” The Jira guide: “A dataset can connect how work was scoped with how long it actually took and what it was blocked by.” The Asana guide says each task “carries an assignee, due date, custom fields and the comments where people hand work back and forth.”

Read together, those are the records described above. Which of them the agency owns is the next question.

What is never included

Client and contact details are out. Polyshares’ data handling page says “Names, emails, phone numbers, account numbers, and addresses are removed or replaced by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any buyer sees the record.” Payment details, invoices to named clients and staff files are not how the work was done, and stay out as our own advice. Our page on what is never included sets out the general lines.

Client-owned work is the big one for an agency. Many agency contracts assign the deliverables to the client, often on final payment. Some assign more: the source files, the working files, sometimes everything made for the project. Polyshares’ home page says its licence “does not cover what you hold on behalf of your own clients.” Its legal answer page says material held under an agreement that assigns ownership to the client “cannot be licensed regardless of value, and only the contracts separate the two.” It calls this “the single most common reason a promising record turns out to be unsaleable.” Our page on client-owned work and NDAs explains how to read those clauses.

Then the confidentiality terms. Polyshares’ legal page says customer agreements “often contain restrictions on use and disclosure that reach further than owners remember,” and that many allow use “in aggregated or de-identified form,” which it calls “the door most licensing deals go through.” An agency that signed a client’s NDA before the pitch should find it before counting anything from that project.

The tools help with scope. Polyshares’ Figma guide says “Drafts are private to each member, so personal explorations stay out unless members move them into shared folders.” Its Asana guide: “You pick the teams and projects in scope, so private projects such as HR or finance can stay out.” Its Jira guide: “You choose which projects are included, so security, HR or customer-specific projects can stay out.” An agency can put its internal projects, its proposals and its retrospectives in scope and leave a client’s workspace out.

How de-identification works

Polyshares publishes the sequence.

Counting comes first, sending never does until there is a deal. “Intake asks for record counts, not files or exports. Nothing leaves your systems until Polyshares has made an offer and you have accepted it.” An agency can count its Figma files, its tickets and its proposals from the tools themselves.

The PII partner works before anyone reads. Polyshares says the partner removes or replaces names and contact details, and that “Roles, timestamps, and the work itself are kept.” A feedback round keeps “account manager,” “designer” and “client” as roles, the dates and the comments. It loses who they were.

A sample is read. “Someone on the team reads the anonymized sample before Polyshares prices the record.” Anything still identifying goes back for another pass.

The listing is anonymous. Polyshares says listings carry no company name, website, people or exact locations, and “An edit that tries to reintroduce any of those is refused before it saves.”

An agency has one particular problem: the work itself identifies the client. A logo is a brand. A homepage design names the company in the header. De-identification of a design file is not the same as removing a name from an email, and Polyshares decides what it can use. Our page on how de-identification works explains the general process.

What decides the price

Polyshares prices each record after reading it.

The range: its home page says “Typical deals run $100K to $2M and above” (indicative, not an offer). Its answer page says deals “run higher for large or long records.”

The published deal closest to an agency is the global marketing agency at $110,000 (indicative, not an offer). The others are a roofing company, a general contractor and a solar company. Polyshares does not say how many years or projects sat behind any of them.

What raises it, in Polyshares’ words: “Visible disagreement and correction, because a record of people being wrong and then getting it right cannot be manufactured.” An agency’s feedback rounds and reopened tickets are that, project after project. Also “Length of continuous operating history,” and “clean rights, because provenance that does not have to be litigated is worth paying up for.”

What caps it: “A short operating history.” Records “the company holds but does not own.” And material “that is already public, published, scraped, or widely syndicated.” That last one matters for an agency. The live website is public. The finished campaign is published. What is not public is the path to them: the proposals, the rounds, the tickets, the internal comments.

Polyshares’ answer page puts it plainly: “What we are paying for is captured judgment.” Our page on what decides the price goes through the general factors. How many years of proposals and project boards does your agency still have?

Which programme fits

On this site, Polyshares’ programme is for US companies with fewer than 30 people. Most independent design studios and web shops fall inside that line. Our page on the programme for 29 or fewer people has the detail.

The estimate asks how many people work at the agency, counting everyone: designers, developers, project managers, account staff and regular contractors you count as the team. It names the programme that fits. A larger agency, or one based outside the US, is pointed to the programme for it.

Polyshares says “The length and texture of the record matter more than headcount or revenue.” A six-person studio with twelve years of proposals and boards has length and texture.

Construction companies run on the same cycle of proposal, change order and closeout, with drawings in place of mockups; see construction companies. Law firms share the agency’s question of what belongs to the client and what is the firm’s own method; see law firms. Accounting and tax firms also scope, review and reprice work for clients each year; see accounting and tax firms.

TrustPast

Questions and answers

Doesn’t the client own the designs?

Often, yes, and the contract decides. Polyshares says its licence does not cover what you hold on behalf of your own clients, and that only the contracts separate your own record from client material.

What would be our own record, then?

This is our own description: proposals and estimates, the change requests, the internal comments on each round, the ticket board, time against estimate and the retrospectives. Polyshares says the value is in reasoning that was captured while the work happened.

Has Polyshares licensed an agency’s records before?

Polyshares’ case studies list a global marketing agency, in professional services, at $110,000 (indicative, not an offer). It does not publish what that agency’s record held.

Do our Figma files count?

Polyshares’ Figma guide says Figma files hold the path from rough exploration to shipped interface, and that version history shows how a design changed over weeks of review. Which files are yours to license is a contract question.

Do we have to send files to apply?

No. Polyshares says intake asks for record counts, not files or exports, and nothing leaves your systems until it has made an offer and you have accepted it.

What does it cost the agency?

Nothing. Polyshares says there is no fee and no commission. Polyshares pays TrustPast a referral fee; you pay us nothing.